Foul-weather Friend

When one is young, darkness holds its own confused anxiety. What’s unknown, unseen, is waiting for you to make the wrong move, and take you from your childish safety.

I don’t remember when day became the source of fear, and night a comforting relief. It was a slow, intangible shift. With the fading of illusory stability, daylit reality lost much of its charm. It expects so much, watches so much.

Do, get, achieve. Interact, help - but don’t get in anyone’s way. Stumble, rise, apologize.

Now the night is all my own. I have no fear of my lifelong friend. I never ask for her forgiveness, for there are no boundaries to trespass. She sits with me silently, asking nothing, and for a time I have no fear.

Then she leaves me, and I stand alone again on shifting ground.

It’s how it should be.